In a small village in post-war France, a baker and his wife settle into a marriage lacking physical warmth. Elodie serves at the counter while her husband works in the basement, trying to bake the perfect loaf. The villagers live similar lives: the husbands work at their businesses (grocer, butcher, mayor, etc) and their wives help, while also gathering together to exchange gossip. Into this tight community comes a strange couple. The village will never be the same again.
Only three characters are fully named. All are female and the narrative focusses on just two: Elodie and Violet, the wife within the new couple. Her husband is an American dubbed ‘the ambassador’. Violet is seen as an exotic beauty, with expensive tastes in food and clothing. The ambassador is treated with suspicion, but befriends the men of the village by buying drinks each night at the bar. Elodie is entranced by Violet and inveigles her way into the couple’s lives. As she becomes closer to Violet, Elodie’s husband becomes more remote. His pursuit of the ambassador’s American bread additive is pivotal.
There are whispered secrets and an undercurrent of both eroticism and violence, with fingers on throats and into ribs a common theme. Madness and oddities descend on the village. Eight horses are discovered dead in a field; a boy jumps into a fire; and a man runs through the church’s stained-glass window. Elodie acts as confessor to the community, and the secrets they tell become more perverse over time.
This is told as a folktale and the narrative voice’s calmness masks an unfolding horror. This is storytelling at its most magnificent.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure, which won the 2019 Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. In 2016 she won the White Review Short Story Prize and the Virago/Stylist short story competition. She has been published in The New York Times, Elle, and Granta, among others.
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